Multimedia News

Search

Daily IU news update

May 21, 2007

Trustees to get input on plan at meeting todayBloomington Herald-Times, May 21 -- Indiana University officials say they need to increase student tuition and fees to remain competitive in hiring and retaining the best faculty and offering the best education possible. "The expectations that Hoosiers have for Indiana University are very high, and they should be," said Judy Palmer, IU vice president and chief financial officer. "We believe that mediocrity is not an option for us." Administrators are proposing to raise tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates by 5 percent -- twice the rate of inflation -- each of the next two years. Increases for out-of-state students would be 9 percent in 2007-08 and 11 percent in 2008-09. Full story

Indiana ponies up, but tuition gallops on; Collegians face 4%-6% increase even as state kicks in more cash; Indiana ponies up, but tuition gallops on; IU to Hold Meeting on Proposed Tuition IncreaseIndianapolis Star, Lafayette Journal and Courier and WSJV-TV, May 20 -- Public institutions statewide are about to raise undergraduate tuition rates for most in-state students between 4 percent and 6 percent in each of the next two years. For some schools, that's about the same level of increases seen in years when state budgets were much leaner. Critics say the latest increases are proof that these institutions may be raising tuition too much. Judith Palmer, IU's vice president and chief financial officer, said her school has turned to private gifts and other options to raise money and take pressure off tuition. She said IU has cut administrative costs, as well. For instance, the school recently outsourced its motor pool and transferred operations at its bookstore to retailer Barnes & Noble. Combined, the moves could save $9 million or more. "(State lawmakers) were able to step up, and we are very grateful for that," Palmer said. "But we also feel the pressure. Mediocrity is not an option for us." Full story1. Full story2. Full story3.

Purdue trustees approve 4.5% increase in tuitionBloomington Herald-Times, May 21 -- Purdue University trustees voted Friday to raise tuition and fees 4.5 percent during each of the next two years. Under the tuition hike, in-state students at the school's main campus in West Lafayette who have enrolled since last summer will pay $7,416 this coming year and $7,750 the following year. Out-of-state tuition would go up to $22,224 this year and $23,224 next year. Full story

Mellencamp getting new artificial turf fieldBloomington Herald-Times, May 19 -- The Indiana football program will soon have a new artificial turf field for its indoor practice facility. A grass-like turf is to be installed at Mellencamp Pavilion, with work starting next week. It will replace the turf put in when the facility opened in 1996. The cost and source of funding for the new field was not available from the IU athletic department Friday. The field will be composed of a mixture of 75 percent rubber and 25 percent sand. Like the new artificial turf installed at Memorial Stadium in 2003 at a cost of about $450,000, the new field will be made of individual grass-like fibers. Full story

Serving the musicIndiana Daily Student, May 21 -- It wasn't something she planned. That is what Helen Clouse says of her life and age. Clouse has been serving the Jacobs School of Music by assigning students to practice rooms and assisting them for various needs. She is currently the oldest employee at IU. On May 1, she turned 100 years old. On her birthday, the Jacobs School hosted a celebration in front of the music practice building. The school dedicated the decorated bench area in front of the building as Helen Clouse Plaza in honor of her services to the University. Full story

EMC launches global collaborative research networkArabianBusiness.com, May 21 -- EMC Corp., the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced the formation of the new EMC Innovation Network. The EMC Innovation Network will broaden the company's engagements with leading university research programs and consortia, including Carnegie Mellon University's Parallel Data Lab; Indiana University's Data and Search Institute; RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy, whose participants include faculty from Johns Hopkins University and University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Stanford University's Applied Crypto Group; University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology Integration. Full story

Universities Prepare as Physicists Plan to Pop ProtonsGRID Today, May 21 -- Indiana University is playing a key role in CERN's ATLAS project, which, like the CMS project, aims to discover insights into subatomic physics and the nature of matter. Full story

Software screens students' papers for plagiarismIndianapolis Star (Gary Post-Tribune article), May 21 -- In the age of the Internet, finding valid information for a research paper is easier than ever. But so is plagiarism. Indiana University Northwest in Gary tries to stop cheating with Turnitin, said spokeswoman Michelle Searer. But students are not required to submit their papers to the service. Instead, professors turn in suspicious papers themselves on a case-by-case basis. Full story

Universities confront growing honesty gap; Dishonesty is big news on campus: Experts say cheating is a common practiceMSNBC and Concord Monitor (AP article), May 21 -- If the academic year now winding down had a theme, it was a more subtle one: dishonesty. Consider: Nine students were dismissed and another 37 given lesser punishments for cheating on an exam at Indiana University's dental school. Full story1. Full story2.

Conference issues call to halt violenceIndianapolis Star, May 20 -- Violent crime is on the rise in Indianapolis. Now what? This was the question posed by an Indiana University student group that hosted "Call to Action: Campaign to Stop Youth Violence" on Saturday. The conference brought together several black politicians, pastors, community leaders and youth workers on the campus of IUPUI to tackle violent crime across the state. "We all already know what the problem is. We've talked about it; now we have to do something about it," said Rodney Cobb, 30, conference organizer and recent IU political science graduate. "We don't want a reduction; we want crime gone. And it's possible," he said. Full story

Cox Scholarship gives merit-based aid to working studentsIndiana Daily Student, May 21 -- Each year the IU Foundation awards one of the largest merit-based student scholarships. This year, as the 2007 scholars await announcement, the 2006 scholars offer their experiences with the scholarship that pays for 75 percent of the students total school expenses. Lolita Christopher, an employee of the IU Foundation, said that the Cox Scholarship began when Jesse and Beulah Cox gave a $15 million endowment to start the program. Full story

Indiana University offers Mongolian language Summer WorkshopMongolia Web News, May 19 -- A summer workshop in Slavic, East European and Central Asian languages at Indiana University was reported on. Full story

A&E BriefsSouth Bend Tribune, May 20 -- The 67th annual Indiana University Writers Conference, featuring 100 poets and fiction and nonfiction writers, will take place June 10-15 at Indiana University Bloomington. Full story

Fed up with meal planSouth Bend Tribune, May 20 -- The newspaper's Action Line columnist addresses a complaint from a the parent of a former IU student over the university's meal plan. Full story

IU accounting grads honored at dinnerBloomington Herald-Times, May 20 -- Graduates of the Indiana University's Kelley School of Business graduate accounting program were honored at a dinner earlier this month. Bryan Glanzberg and Brett Berghel were selected by their classmates to address the graduates, and the annual Faculty Teaching Award was given to associate professor of business law Tom Bowers. Full story

IU voices in the news:

Sowing seeds for rural medicineIndianapolis Star, May 21 -- As a medical student in Ohio, Dr. Matt Waldron spent two summers working with a rural physician, which cemented his desire to follow the same path. Now the doctor, who has a family medical practice in French Lick, mentors students from the Indiana University School of Medicine in the hope that he will have a similar effect. Full story

IU study: InteractionIndianapolis Star, May 21 -- Patients with heart failure who work with a pharmacist take their medicines more reliably and go to the emergency room and hospital less often, a study by Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine researchers found. That effect dissipated after the pharmacists stopped meeting with the patients, according to the study in the May 15 Annals of Internal Medicine. Full story

O'Reilly study gets bile-filled reply from 'windbag' himselfBloomington Herald-Times, May 20 -- You'll never believe how television commentator Bill O'Reilly and his Fox News cohorts responded to an Indiana University analysis that demonstrated that "The O'Reilly Factor" is anything but "fair and balanced" and is, rather, filled with name-calling and misrepresentations of the truth. "Last night he called us loony and bogus," co-author Betsi Grabe said last week. Previously, O'Reilly called the peer-reviewed study "nutty." Full story

Questions not answeredBloomington Herald-Times, May 21 -- In this letter to the editor, Bloomington resident Ken Vanderlinden is critical of the Herald-Times' review of the Indiana University O'Reilly study. "Emily Thickstun's May 3 'O'Reilly' review left me with many unanswered questions. Thickstun reviews an Indiana University study that concludes O'Reilly is not fair and balanced and likens him to Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, who they say was considered a dangerous man," writes Vanderlinden. Full story

Ignorance comes easy, but the insults are hardTacoma News-Tribune, May 20 -- Some college professors from Indiana did a study recently showing that cable-TV commentator Bill O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds during his opening editorials. "The study (which O'Reilly attacked) made me realize how hard it is to be a cable-TV commentator or the online equivalent, the blogger - the only other jobs that I might be qualified for based on my education and work history," noted the columnist. Full story

'Golf' — the game and the play — seduces Michael RobertsWorcester Telegram, May 20 -- Michael Roberts hasn't been playing the course his professors at Indiana University might have envisioned for him when he was a student. You could say he took a swing in a different direction. Roberts received a master's degree in classical composition from the university, but his subsequent career has veered into musical theater. And he hit something of a hole-in-one in 2003 when he wrote "Golf: The Musical." Full story

Social networking sites to overtake porn sites as most popular web destinationsHalifax Chronicle-Herald (Economist article), May 21 -- When the Internet took off in the 1990s, it was demonized as a steaming cauldron of porn. In America, the proportion of site visits that are pornographic is falling and people are flocking to sites categorized ""net communities and chat" chiefly social-networking sites such as Second Life, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. Edward Castronova of Indiana University estimates that sex is ""a substantial portion, perhaps even the majority" of economic transactions in Second Life. Full story

Astrologers can embrace smarts ideaNew Haven Register, May 20 -- A researcher at the University of Indiana School of Medicine (sic) has a surprising theory. The date that the baby is conceived affects the embryo's future academic achievement. So thinks Dr. Paul Winchester, professor of clinical pediatrics, who studied 1,667,391 Indiana students. He and colleagues found an association between the scores of students in grades three through 10 who took the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress (ISTEP) examination with the month in which each student had been conceived. Full story

Avoid pesticidesBloomington Herald-Times, May 21 -- In this letter to the editor, IU entomologist Marc Lame expresses his concern for the use of pesticides to rid schools of carpenter bees. "This fear is exactly what the pesticide and pest control industries have cultivated to make money. In my experience as an entomologist, I have never witnessed a sting from this insect nor significant structural damage to buildings or decks due to their nesting behavior," writes Lame. Full story

Goal of politics is to seek remediesFort Wayne Journal-Gazette, May 21 --Lee Hamilton, director of the IU Center on Congress, is the author of an op-ed. Full story

Passion for kayaking leads to 'marching awarenessIndiana Daily Student, May 21 --Sophomore Ty Giddens and juniors Francis Bearsch and Brad Acree all have one thing in common: their passion for kayaking. This time theyre doing it to raise money for the March of Dimes. Full story

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Playing the Rankings GameA Chronicle analysis of U.S. News data from the past 24 years reveals that the rankings game does not provide a level playing field for all contestants. The magazine's criteria seem to overwhelmingly favor private institutions. While 10 of the top-25 national universities in 1989 were public, only three made the cut on the most recent list. Conversely, every college that has managed to significantly improve its rank during that time is private. Full story

What the Rankings Do for 'U.S. News'The annual "America's Best Colleges" issue of U.S. News & World Report has long been referred to as the magazine's swimsuit issue. While the comparison is made in jest, in terms of newsstand sales the association with the popular Sports Illustrated cover is not far off. Full story

Fixing a Fatal Flaw in 'U.S. News' RankingsHere is the Chronicle's editorial about the U.S. News rankings. Full story

Advocate of Intelligent Design Who Was Denied Tenure Has Strong Publications RecordAt first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination. As an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State University, Guillermo Gonzalez has a better publication record than any other member of the astronomy faculty. He also happens to publicly support the concept of intelligent design. Last month he was denied tenure. Full story

Colby College Gets Gift of Art Valued at More Than $100-MillionThe Colby College Museum of Art will receive a collection of American art valued at more than $100-million, college officials announced on Friday. The trove includes 201 etchings and lithographs by James McNeill Whistler, making it the largest single Whistler collection given to an academic museum. Full story

The IU Daily News Brief is a short review of media coverage relating to IU administrative and student news, federal and state legislative policy, and trends and issues in higher education. Prepared by the Office of Media Relations, the IU Daily News Brief is not an all-inclusive gathering of news featuring IU faculty and staff. To subscribe to the IU Daily IU news update list or to have your name removed, please contact Susan Williams in IU Media Relations at sulwilli@indiana.edu.